You're So Dark
by Lori von Loco
Summary: They stared at each other for a solid ten seconds before Pete sighed and snuffed out his third cigarette of the hour in the pricey glass ashtray before him. "You got a car, Makowski?"


**You're So Dark**

**A/N: **I felt like it was time for some more cranky Goths and douchey little vampire kids, so here we are.

* * *

_"And I know I'm not your type_

'_Cause I don't shun the daylight_

_But baby I'm willing to start."_

—You're So Dark, Arctic Monkeys

* * *

For all of his smarts, Pete was quite dumb when it came to dealing with his feelings. This was mostly because he was convinced he had none, other than complete and utter anguish, which was a fact that everyone around him appeared to be aware of. Because of this lack of knowledge, he found himself falling prey to a school-day routine he had no control over: Some ridiculous vampire-wannabe would flash him a knowing smirk in the hallway, usually when they were walking with their cult's leader, a tall boy of whom Pete was irritatingly enamored. He tried to keep this information contained, and, for a while, it worked—no one had caught on.

Henrietta eventually did. Because Henrietta knew, Michael knew; the two oldest Goths practically shared a brain these days. Firkle figured it out through Ike's grand predilection for guessing people's thoughts, and Pete was still bitter about their conjoined teasing.

He was beginning to hate them all, though Michael assured him it was just his temper getting the best of him. His friend must've been telling the truth, because sixteen-year-old boys did not go to parties with people they hated. Or maybe they did—Pete couldn't be sure. But _he_ certainly didn't, at any rate, yet here he was. So he supposed he didn't hate his friends. Not yet, anyway.

His friends may not have made it onto his list of abhorred items, but social gatherings certainly did, and this one was to be the biggest of the school year since it was being thrown by Token Black, a boy who'd just won his seventh presidential award and had already been accepted into the college of his dreams in his junior year of high school. The event sprawled across the entire house, as Token's parents were suspiciously M.I.A. and therefore not able to restrict access to any given location. Bedrooms, especially, were quickly becoming hotspots. It was only five p.m., too, Pete noticed. Teenagers were disgusting.

He considered the likelihood of Michael's agreeing to take him back home before midnight—the time at which they'd planned to leave for Firkle's sake, because he was adamant on getting Ike into bed that night—but his chances of winning that argument were low, despite the fact he knew Michael and Henrietta hated parties as much as he did. And, just like that, he was considering _actually _walking an entire nine blocks back to his own home.

The consideration was dropped after five minutes, when Mike Makowski was shoved rather rudely toward the table he sat at by some small, fairy-bodied girl he called Bloodrayne. "Go get him, tiger!" the girl practically screeched, making Pete wince at the sound and Mike wince in embarrassment.

They stared at each other for a solid ten seconds before Pete sighed and snuffed out his third cigarette of the hour in the pricey glass ashtray before him. "You got a car, Makowski?" he asked, finally.

Mike's shoulders tensed, then dropped. "No. Bloodrayne drove me."

"What, you don't have a freaking license yet?"

"I do. Just not a car." Mike placed one hand on the table so he could lean toward Pete, who focused on the other's rubber-bracelet-laden wrist rather than his face. "You're really one to talk. You don't even have a permit."

"I was driving myself around by age ten, so you can eff right off, Count Fagula. I don't need to conform to society's dumb laws."

"That seems sort of unsafe." As he spoke, Mike moved to sit across from the other boy and occupied himself by sliding the ashtray around on the tabletop, producing scraping noises that eventually had Pete catching his wrist and holding it tightly. "All right," said Goth began, "that needs to stop, like, now."

"Fine, gees." Mike wiggled in his seat a bit, and Pete finally dropped his wrist.

The boy with the red in his hair took a long drag of his cigarette, blew all the smoke in Mike's face, then looked at him thoughtfully. Teenagers were disgusting, but, then again, he was one. He supposed he might as well be disgusting, too, if it saved him from this social torture. "Let's go upstairs."

"Really?" Mike asked, his face lighting up surprisingly quickly before flushing at his over-exuberant tone of voice. "I mean, yeah. Cool."

Pete snorted and led the way, pausing only briefly to stub out his Marlboro. "We're going to have to find one that's empty," he remarked flatly, just in time to be rammed into by a giggling, disheveled Bebe.

"Did you need a room?" she asked with a wide grin. "Kenny 'n' I just finished in the master if you want that one. It's in the very back, upstairs. Hurry, though."

The Goth didn't bother to nod at her as they headed toward the indicated room. Before they made it inside, a male's voice—unrecognizable to Pete, but judging from Mike's panicked expression, the same couldn't be said for him—stopped them with its disbelieving tone. "_Oh_ my God. Vampir, I didn't know you were…into that sort of thing…"

"I'm not!" Mike said quickly, holding his hands up in front of his chest. "I need to use the bathroom! Pete was helping me find it!"

"But Bebe said—"

"She was joking, Ryan." The faux-vampire's voice was a low hiss now, though it still wavered a bit. "Don't say anything, or people will get the wrong idea, okay?"

"Sure, sure, whatever," Ryan returned with a click of his tongue. "Good luck with that, uh, bathroom trip."

Mike scoffed and stalked into the master bedroom while Pete allowed the door to be slammed in his face. He expected that much, but he also knew that Mike would open the door again after he was sure Ryan was gone.

His knowledge didn't fail him; the door creaked open a safe moment later, and he was gestured inside. By Mike's pale hand, which sported nail polish in an incredibly glossy red, the door was closed once again and locked securely. "Ryan Ellis knows I'm up here."

Pete wasn't sure if Mike was talking to himself or not, but he still chose to say nothing. Eventually the other boy relaxed, then tugged his fang caps off and shoved them in his front pocket. "I'm ready when you are."

The shorter boy raised an eyebrow. "You're serious? I thought for sure you'd wuss out."

"I'm not gonna wuss out. I actually can't if we haven't even started," Mike returned matter-of-factly, putting his hands on his bony hips and sticking his tongue out with such a flair that Pete felt he had to roll his eyes or he might actually die from suppressing an urge so strong.

"Whatever you say, Mike,"

"Vamp—"

"No fangs, no vampire." Pete pretended to examine his nails for the briefest of moments, then looked up and flipped his hair in one fluid moment. "Not that you're one with the fangs."

Mike rolled his eyes, too. "Y'know, I'm over your rudeness."

Pete only grunted in response before he sat on the edge of the bed and eyed the other expectantly. With only a second of hesitation, the older boy sat beside him. "So," the latter began, voice so thick with tension that Pete was a little mortified to find some of it had transferred to him. That was his excuse, anyway, for the painful-sounding catch in his throat that preceded his reply of the same useless word Mike had spoken.

The background noise from the ceiling fan above them was the only sound for a few seconds. Then, finally, Mike's voice returned. "You have no idea what you're doing, do you?"

"Fuck off."

"I mean, I don't either."

"I know what I'm doing, poser."

"Sure you do."

With a low scoff, Pete glanced away as if unconcerned with the situation, then awkwardly leaned closer to Mike. The latter's face warmed to a considerably pink hue beneath the thin layer of nearly-white concealer, but he managed to crash his lips onto Pete's quickly enough to hide it.

They sat like that for another two seconds, and the experience ended with Pete pulling away and reaching for his cigarettes mostly as an excuse to eclipse the clumsiness of the situation. Mike mumbled something under his breath, effectively stopping the search for tobacco.

"What was that?" the Goth asked, a little lighter in his tone than he'd intended to be.

"You taste like bitter candy."

Pete didn't think he'd eaten anything that would've made that possible. He furrowed his eyebrows and stared absently at the window on the eastern wall until he realized that Mike probably meant he tasted like coffee. It was a weird thought, though it didn't feel like it should've been.

Out of nowhere, Pete mumbled, "I can't believe you."

"Tell me about it," Mike mumbled back.

The former, feeling eerily hollow in his chest, managed to stuff the void with enough false confidence to steal a glance at the other, only to have it all burnt to nothingness again when he accidentally caught Mike's own stare. "What?" was the automatic question from both of them.

"You _are_ a freakin' wuss," was the Goth's answer, pressing Mike to lean down closer to his face.

"Am not."

"I'm not playing this game w—"

The faux-vampire decided, for whatever reason, that now would be a good time for a second attempt at a kiss. This one was slower, less bitter, and a little more nervous. Their lips barely brushed, but Pete ignored whatever sentiment that had created and pressed closer.

He could hear someone's heart hammering, and he sincerely hoped that it wasn't his. Oddly enough, that was the first time in a long while he remembered hoping for anything. Mike chuckled; presently, the thumping sound got louder. _Fuck, it _was _him. _Hoping never got anyone anywhere.

Not that the taller boy noticed, considering he seemed to have suddenly acquired the balls that Pete still apparently lacked and had just slid one arm around the other's waist to pull him closer.

This was quite possibly the most conformist thing the Goth had ever done. His chest was actually touching someone else's, and that wasn't something he usually found comfortable, what with his slight claustrophobia and his much-less-slight introversion. This, though—this wasn't as bad as it could've been. Things were actually going quiet well. After all, he could've been rejected entirely. That nasty thought pricked his skin and drew goosebumps from it, leading him to wonder why he'd thought asking had been a good idea in the first place, and how it actually ended up working somewhat in his favor.

They pulled apart, and Mike grinned while Pete tried to hide the fact he needed to catch his breath. Sometime in the seconds between him regaining oxygen and formulating an insult effective enough to wipe the smug smile from the other's face, there was a knock on the door.

The vampire snatched his hand away from Pete's back and managed to look just as startled as the Goth felt. Neither of them said anything.

"Who's in there?" The speaker's voice was coming from outside the door, but it was suspiciously distant.

"_Shhhh_, don't let them hear you!" That voice was closer, and definitely belonged to the pixie-like girl from earlier. Bloodrayne, Pete recalled in a shot of realization.

"Crap," he whispered, "there's a crowd out there."

"_What?" _Mike hissed back, only to be silently shushed by a gesture on Pete's part.

There was, in fact, a din of voices coming from the hall outside the room. Bebe's and Bloodrayne's were distinguishable. It was likely that Ryan Ellis and the rest of the vampire kids were there, too. Maybe even Henrietta and Michael.

A sudden chill brought the shorter boy to his feet. Without speaking, he gestured toward the window and pulled out his phone.

"We're on the second story, stupid," Mike returned softly, although he was inching toward it, regardless.

"Yeah. Michael."

"Don't call me that."

"I didn't. I mean I'm getting Michael."

Mike looked thoroughly confused as to how Michael could help, but he didn't ask questions.

A few texts later, Pete had a decent picture of the whole scene. "I hate you, Mike," he sighed as he pressed a hand to his forehead.

"Why is this _my_ fault?"

"Because you're the freakin' cult boy with two hundred friends. They're out there because they think you're in here with a boy."

"They don't know you're in here?"

Pete shrugged and leaned against the wall to the window's immediate right. "It doesn't matter who I am. It's you they want to gossip about. And I'm guessing Hot Topic's number one patron doesn't have parents who would approve of their son keeping secrets with another boy in someone else's bedroom, if you know what I mean."

Mike's face paled. "Oh, gosh. I didn't think about that."

"Of course you didn't."

Their whispers stopped the moment Pete sent his last text of the night. Michael's response, which looked promising, came a minute later: _We're here. You owe me so freaking bad._

The shorter teen gestured toward the window once again, prompting Mike to hoist the glass up. Upon looking down, he saw Henrietta and Michael standing on either side of a wooden ladder of dubious origins, the boy looking only slightly annoyed in comparison to the impressive scowl that slashed across the girl's face.

"You go first," Mike said after a moment of unsure silence.

"I'm the only one going down," Pete answered, raising an eyebrow. "If we both leave, that will look suspicious."

"Why?"

"Are you effin retarded?" Pete rolled his eyes and got into a crouch on the windowsill, pressing his hands against the sides of the window frame for support. "Just stick to your bathroom lie. Not everyone will believe you, but they won't have proof of who you were in here with."

"O-okay."

"Wait to leave the room until we drag the ladder back into the garage, got it?"

Mike nodded twice, still looking a little dubious.

Pete sighed. "Meet me out front. And make sure you act like you have nowhere to be."

"How do you know so much about parties?"

"The only thing I know about parties is how to get away from them." With that, Pete lowered himself onto the ladder and began his descent down the side of the house.

Mike curled his hands over the edge and leaned out the window, watching the other scale lower until his creeper-clad feet hit the grass and his friends stuck him with the duty of pulling the ladder back down. Instead of taking it back to the garage as Pete had told Mike they would, they simply let it lie there, abandoned in the yard, before they disappeared around the corner toward the front of the massive estate.

The faux-vampire swallowed hard and slowly approached the bedroom door. He could still hear the murmuring from outside, in spite of the periodic shushing from who he assumed was either Bloodrayne or Bebe.

With a deep breath and an easy smile, he opened the door to reveal a crowd (much larger than he'd anticipated) of eavesdropping teenagers. He expected most, if not all, of them to scatter when he showed himself, but every single one of them stayed put, eyeing him expectantly. Bloodrayne and Kenny McCormick stood at the front of the pack; the former brought up the elephant in the room. "So, who's in there, Vampir?"

Mike donned his best confused face. "Uh, no one."

"We heard someone."

"I was just watching TV."

The girl's mouth drooped. "Aw, lame." Behind her, the crowd started to grumble and disperse. As Mike nudged his way through them to get downstairs, he heard Kenny whispering to Butters that he knew someone snuck out the window because he did it all the time. The question was, who had it been?

Mike swallowed a lump in his throat. He just barely made it outside without breaking a sweat, and there he found Pete, standing in the front yard with two out of three of the remaining members to their "nonconformist" clique. The two of them locked eyes for a split second before Pete looked away.

"I can't stay here," Mike blurted without thinking.

The tall, curly-haired boy, whose name Mike remembered only because it was his own, looked as though he expected him to say just that. "I know. I can't stand another minute of this torture, either."

"But Firkle stole my goddamned car," the girl beside him said with a note of bitter resentment. Mike thought she always sounded like that, but this occurrence must have made her more irritated with the world than she usually was. "To bang his goddamned boyfriend."

Mike's face colored; he was eternally thankful that it was dark outside, so the others wouldn't notice. "Well, I can, uh, walk home."

"Good for you, douchebag," Henrietta said flatly before taking a drag of her cigarette. The ember flared orange, illuminating the deep violet of her lips. Which reminded Mike…

"Hey, wait!" he began exuberantly, leading Henrietta to sneer, Michael to mumble a low "Oh, god," and Pete to maintain eye contact with the tree to his far left as intently as he could. "I can get Bloodrayne to drive you guys back home!"

"I'd rather kill myself," Michael said bluntly.

"Can you be any louder?" Henrietta added.

"Sounds good. Get me out of here," Pete said. Immediately, his friends regarded him with expressions that told Mike they may've been more disgusted with him, had they not been used to the situation already.

"You two losers get a room," the girl said with a scoff. "We'll take our chances waiting for Firkle."

"They had a room. We all know how well that ended," Michael reminded her. Pete pointedly rolled his eyes in his friend's direction.

Again, Mike's face flushed. "Ah, okay, um... Uh, yeah, hold on and I'll go get Lynn." Without another word, he sped off, braving the tangle of teens once more. When he returned moments later—after fighting his way past Stan, Wendy, and Kyle providing one another with hickeys by the front door—the older two Goths had disappeared, but Pete remained on the front lawn, arms around his waist and head lolled to one side.

"Is your friend freaking coming, or what?"

Mike held up a ring full of keys, each of them bearing a brightly-colored head dipped in what was either house paint or impressively opaque nail polish. "She gave me the keys so we could sit, but she said to wait for her to get done talking to Ryan."

Pete lit a cigarette and placed it between his lips while he considered his options. In the end, following in Firkle's footsteps won out, and he mumbled around the filter, "Let's take the car."

"_What?_"

"You heard me, Count Fagula."

"I—I can't take her _car_, per se. I could ask—"

"You have her keys."

"I, uh, don't have a license."

Pete leveled a judgmental stare at the other boy. The faux-vampire was momentarily caught up in the way Pete said his name, but after a few shifting thoughts and a realization, he muttered an embarrassed, "Oh, yeah, I already told you I did, earlier..."

"Right."

"I'll apologize to her later."

"Why don't you just take—" Pete paused. "Oh, hey, you actually got less lame in the last twenty seconds."

"Did I?"

"Sure." The shorter of them reached out to take the keys. "I'll drive, if you want."

"No I…" Mike tried to suppress a smile and failed in his rush of excitement. "I wanna drive."

The corner of Pete's mouth twitched for a single second, as though he might've smiled. That, of course, was impossible, but Mike held the expression as dearly as if it had been a genuine smile. "Let's go," he said confidently.

Pete stomped his cigarette out in the dirt and followed Mike into Bloodrayne's polished two-door car. "I kind of like the feeling of being rebellious," the taller boy said, voice rising higher than normal in the throes of giddy ecstasy.

"Maybe if you rebel enough you could learn to be slightly bearable."

"You think I can do it? Be all dark and mysterious and stuff, like you guys?"

The shorter Goth was quiet for a while, watching Token's house disappear behind the car as Mike drove off. He wasn't paying too much attention to many of the words the other was saying, but rather on the burning thrill of anticipation that felt like acid gnawing away at him. It was, in all actuality, disgustingly pleasant. He wondered if Firkle felt the same way when he'd done this.

At length, he finally replied: "Stealing a car makes you pretty hardcore, I guess."

"Yeah?"

"It's a start."

(And a very promising one, at that.)


End file.
